March 22, 2011

But there is something about the style of the two men — their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views — that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered. McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not.

A couple preliminary observations:

1. The protesters and the Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature are making a much bigger show of lacking "neighborliness, decency and mutual respect" than the Republicans, who won the election last fall and are attempting to solve a terrible economic problem. Legislators ran to another state and hid out to obstruct the majority, and the protesters have been chanting unneighborly chants and carrying outrageous signs — depicting Scott Walker as Hitler, etc. — for a month. They took over the Capitol, covering its marble walls with nasty signs, defiling its war monument, and breaking things. They mobbed a state senator. They made death threats! Not all of them. But how can you talk about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect and not acknowledge these things?

2. Cronon's the historian, and he points to Joe McCarthy. But couldn't one also point to Ronald Reagan? Yeah, I know: not from Wisconsin. But he was perceived as "a sternly uncompromising leader" when he was Governor of California. All the college kids — including me — thought he was a demon. Cronon says McCarthy "helped create the modern Democratic Party," but Reagan's role in creating the modern Republican Party is even more dramatic. Walker is much more like Reagan. In fact, Reagan's resemblance to McCarthy is greater than Walker's. Reagan got in front of the camera and said some pretty harsh things back in the late 60s. Walker always comes across as a nice person, making tough decisions and doing what he thinks needs to be done.

So, in Cronon's imagination, is simply passing legislation that Democrats don't like showing "contempt" for them? So far as I can tell, Walker bent over backwards to be accomodating - offering concessions and giving the Senators ample time to return, treating protestors with kid gloves, profusely thanking civil service employees who did their duty, and repeatedly acknowledging the concerns of the protestors.

Cronon engages in McCarthyite tactics by sluring Walker by saying he is similiar to McCarthy. He is no netter that the liars in protests who say Walker is a Hilter or dictator. Google the term "unAmerican" and that too is a buzz word of democrats now. Shame.

The economic problems are from all of our past "leaders", Democrats & Republicans from the Maple Bluff mansion to the legislature. We just have a Republican who is finally willing to deal with the situation. Not relying on "stimulus" $ or $ from the Medical Malpractice Fund to mask our problem.

Is it just dishonesty and partisanship, or is this some kind of mass hysteria that causes so many people to make completely unsupportable arguments and be so aggressively unfair about it?

From politicians and academics publicly to virtually every protester who discussed this with Meadhouse on video, these people have been openly dishonest, misinformed and hateful in service of the cause of union power over taxpayers and voters. It's seems to be overpowering for them and irresistible, like an illness.

You can see them when confronted with simple questions as they realize they can't honestly support what they are saying, and you can watch them try to squirm out of what they say without backing down. They dodge and play dumb, and try everything they can to avoid simply considering any alternative viewpoint. It's embarrassing, or should be.

damikesc said...Paul, for all of his faults, McCarthy was correct about Communist infiltration of the government (the Venona cables reveal a lot). This professor is just wrong.

True, But McCarty had no names of list in his pocket. Cronon has no facts in his lie. Since liberals rarely have an open mind it is easier just to make a comparison to Cronon use of a lie to smear Walker. Cronon is guilty of what Liberals pretend McCarthy did.

Ugh, what a dreary, trite, predictable little essay. He checked off every liberal cliche in the book, include the hilariously inappropriate Joseph N. Welch "Have you no decency, Sir?" quote. I'll bet he puffed his chest up a bit when he typed that out, feeling a real progressive truth-teller.

A viscous sludge of liberal sanctimony, perfect for the NYT Op-Ed page.

This shouldn't be taken seriously. The Times is having a contest for who can tie Walker to the most vile historical figure. It's like Flight Attendants and Captains giving each other a word they have to use in their departure speeches.

The liberals in academia, especially the progressive intellectual idiots, always pull out Tail Gunner Joe when things do not go their way. Yell McCartyism and the world will beat a path to your door to hear what you have to say. It is a great marketing tool and grabs attention.

Scott walker is not looking for union thugs under beds. He is not holding hearings to find union enemies of the state in public service. He is not creating a myth surrounding union thugs taking over the country. He is not equating union thugs with some imagined emerging danger.

He is trying to fix an economic problem caused by over generous politicians who were well paid by wealthy unions.

Walker is also living in real history, not some past idealistic glorified hisotry. Public employees are way better paid and have way better benefits than they did in the late 1950s- when public employee unions emerged as a force to be reckoned with.

Maybe the history professor should actually study history instead of trying to rewrite it.

So, in Cronon's imagination, is simply passing legislation that Democrats don't like showing "contempt" for them? So far as I can tell, Walker bent over backwards to be accomodating - offering concessions and giving the Senators ample time to return, treating protestors with kid gloves, profusely thanking civil service employees who did their duty, and repeatedly acknowledging the concerns of the protestors.

Agreed, it seems to me that if one wants an example of “aggressiveness” and “indifference to contrary views,” the last governor of Wisconsin who was notorious for using the line item veto to delete individual words and effectively rewrite bills that were passed by the Assembly would be a more deserving candidate.

From where I sit, the Democrats and the protester/progressive Left have lost more of what little credibility they had left with their behavior in this incident.

It's kind of funny actually how hysterical they are about keeping the right for government employees to extract much better than average compensation from the taxpayer. It's really not a very principled stand in the first place, but for them to make out like Walker is Hitler and democracy has been destroyed and the sky is falling over such a really very modest change in the big scheme of things...it's quite a sight to behold.

I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the UW History Department as being members of the Kochunist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the Governor's Office.

1. Walker and the Republican majority propose restrictions on public employee unions. These are significant restrictions, but no more so than laws that have passed in other states.

2. Instead of debating the legislation, the Democrat minority flees the state, making legislative action impossible.

3. Public employee unions stage weeks of protest, occupying the capital and demonizing their opponents. Secondary protests target perceived pro-Walker businesses. Republicans are stalked to their homes and sent death threats.

No one hated McCarthy because of his "aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views". It was because of his viciousness and willingness to roll over people's lives to accomplish his goals. He "had no decency".

This is kind of like comparing someone to Hitler because they have the same mustache.

People like William Cronon are the reason why I gave history and polisci a wide berth in college (despite my passion for them) and stuck to the sciences. At least there is no difference between liberal and conservative physics or chemistry. (That is, until the hyper-politicized field of CAGW came along.)

I admire Ann Althouse for being "out of the closet" in such an environment.

There were indeed communists, fellow travelers, and spies around - and more than has been acknowledged - but McCarthy did not expose any of them.

The real ones have generally come to light later, by regular police and counter-intelligence work, and memoirs by those who had served their time, KGB files found after the fall of the Soviet Union, etc.I have read that the Cohn and Schine act uncovered precisely one genuine such, and then it was one the FBI already had under surveillance, but then could not prosecute because of the egregious misbehavior by Cohn and Schine.

Cronon writes well representing the 990,000 out of the 100,000 protestors who formed no mob, nor threaten anyone but were and are deeply concerned about Walker's refusal to understand the opposing view points in his rush to pass a budget that ignores Wisconsin tradition, which is why the recall movement has gained such strength.

We learned from the protester the other day that if you do things that aren't nice you're like Hitler. The good professor Cronon knows this is a ridiculous comparison, so he must use one that superficially appears more accurate.

As a liberal and a professor, he thinks if he says it it makes it so. Of course, discussing anything of substance, such as resolving the budget crisis, is out of the question. As a UW professor, which puts him in the same employment group as the protesters, he's hardly an unbiased source for opinon.

One of the things that has made Ann and Meade truly noble in this entire situation is that they have looked far beyond their personal interests.

I'm willing to bet the whomever defaced the Heg statue has visited this blog at least several times over the past few weeks and knows of Meade's feelings about the statue being used for signs, etc. The act was probably as much an effort to offend Meade and Ann as to make any sort of statement.

In Wisconsin's 2010 election campaign, Scott Walker never mentioned once his "bomb" of stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights. Not ONCE!

The people did not vote on union busting and there was no mandate for union busting. Of course, Althouse supoprts union-busting and says Walker should have a free hand to do anything he wants. BUT THERE WAS NO DISCUSSION, NO MANDATE FOR UNION BUSTING.

In 2008, Democrats at all levels campaigned on health care reform as one of the top issues. The election was a mandate for action on health care.

Unlike now, in 2009/10, Althouse supported Republican scorched earth opposition to health care reform. She did not criticize the worst behavior from the worst opponents (and it was bad) as she now demands everybody do among union protestors!

Do you even hear yourself, Ann?

And what is the common thread? Ann Althouse sides with the powerful against working people, against poor people. Because Althouse is an egotistical, overpaid, pampered, tenured professor who will never want for income or health care. Althouse has no simple human compassion.

Cronon writes well representing the 990,000 out of the 100,000 protestors who formed no mob, nor threaten anyone but were and are deeply concerned about Walker's refusal to understand the opposing view points in his rush to pass a budget that ignores Wisconsin tradition, which is why the recall movement has gained such strength.

Yes, but the Tea Party was routinely depicted as murderous thugs for staging quiet demonstrations.

Walker is refusing to understand the opposing points of view. Republicans won the election and the public employee gravy train is over.

Recent Wisconsin tradition is to milk the taxpayers relentlessly to provide exorbitant pay and benefits to public workers.

What was more troubling than the individuals waving swastikas, issuing death threats and vandalizing monuments was that none of the other protesters said or did anything to dissuade the thugs. They let the 10 or 20% of them with truly violent tendencies and destructive impulses run the show.

That's what is so baffling to me. People don't get the fact that there can actually be disagreement about responses and approaches. So, they think, like a three year old, they just have to make more noise to get attention.

But if you're saying, "Walker's refusal to agree with us" is a basis for demonstration and demonization, then, again, that's more of a totalitarian impulse than democratic.

Which is fine if that's where folks are coming from, but I wish they'd just own it, rather than try to couch it in pseudo-empathetic language.

Your position - and that of your fellow Democrats generally - seem to be that when Democrats win an election and get a governorship and/or a legislative majority, that constitutes a mandate ("I won1"), and those of opposing views should meekly submit to the democratic (or Democratic) majority, but when the Republicans do, it is entirely unreasonable of them to enact and act on their programs; they should "consider the oppositions views" and be soliticious of them.

And those that were trying to paint the Tea Party as "raaaaacist" "violent" "homophobic teabaggers" [sic], etc... based on not even 1/10th the ACTUAL incidents seen from the WI protesters have absolutely no standing to say we are painting a whole movement by the excesses of a few.

It is becoming ever more apparent to me that the left (which I once belonged to) regards standards of intellectual honesty as "merely serving bourgeois truth, rather than revolutionary truth".

And those that were trying to paint the Tea Party as "raaaaacist" "violent" "homophobic teabaggers" [sic], etc... based on not even 1/10th the ACTUAL incidents seen from the WI protesters have absolutely no standing to say we are painting a whole movement by the excesses of a few.

It is becoming ever more apparent to me that the left (which I once belonged to) regards standards of intellectual honesty as "merely serving bourgeois truth, rather than revolutionary truth".

Gov. Walker has even changed Stanly Fish's views towards academic unions, and I quote: Should Governor Walker have his way (as it seems he has), should New Hampshire Republicans succeed in disqualifying citizens likely to vote against them, should Riley’s admonition that “students, parents and taxpayers . . . think twice about how unionization affects the quality of higher education” be heeded, the result will be a further entrenchment of the interests that labor to monopolize wealth and power and to create a world in which any of us can be dismissed in the name of achieving a “more flexible workforce,” that is, a workforce that has no choice but to accept whatever its masters deign to offer.

"Now Scott Walker and today's Republicans are tearing down what there forebears erected."

Cry me a river. The grotesquely over-compensated, and corrupt, public employee unions are being told that they can't have all the cookies and ice cream they want so they're throwing a tantrum. The only thing Walker is doing is saving the spoiled little shits from themselves.

The NY Times is in the gutter! Back when the junior senator from Wisconsin was making headlines ... the coverage was weighed in his way. And, against the army. "Have you no decency, sir," Walsh, defending his client, has come into the lexicon.

If we're gonna ask now "who has no shame," the answer is the NY Times.

Plus, CNN, the AP, and Reuters, who went into Tripoli, and surrounded Ghadaffi as human shields. Which is why the second night of the operation, there, was called off. With planes having to turn back.

AlphaLiberal uses a McCarthy-ite lie when he said..."Uh huh. Wow, Ann, you sure do serve up the steaming piles of hypocrisy.

Despite the "gotchya" efforts of you and your husband to falsely protray the protesters, we know the overwhelming majority have NOT carried Nazi signs, did NOT mob a Senator, etc."They never did that. You are not man enough to even try to link or quote them because your pants are on fire.

It's not "breaking the Unions", so much as it is breaking the Democrat Party's stranglehold on all public jobs. The thing the Dems fear the most is that they will no longer be able to confiscate money from public worker's paychecks without the employee's consent. That hits them in the pocketbook and their power base, so they're willing to riot to prevent it.

FLS: What adjectives do conservatives have for the Koch brothers, I wonder?

Why does that matter?

"The Koch family of industrialists and businessmen is most notable for their control of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States. The family business was started by Fred C. Koch, who developed a new method for refining heavy oil into gasoline.[1][2] Fred's four sons became involved in litigation against each other in the 1980s and 1990s.[3] According to the Koch Family Foundations and Philanthropy website, "the foundations and the individual giving of Koch family members" have financially supported organizations "fostering entrepreneurship, education, human services, at-risk youth, arts and culture, and medical research." [4]

All members must initially pay political action contributions (PAC) of $19.99 for full time educators, $10.00 for full time ESP and $5.00 for part time ESP.

PAC refund requests for current year rebates must be made, in writing, between September 1 and October 30, or within 60 days of becoming a member, to WEAC President's Office. Please send a letter to Mary Bell, WEAC President, P.O. Box 8003, Madison, WI 53708.

Give me a list of all Wisconsin public employee unions and I'll find you similar provisions for each one.

@roesch-voltaire -- Given that the alternative to union concessions is layoffs I'm not sure what Fish's point is.

In my experience the least regulated work environments have the lowest barriers to entry and the most flexibility. This is exactly the opposite of "a further entrenchment of the interests that labor to monopolize wealth and power."

In the public sector, unions are "the interests that labor to monopolize wealth and power." There is no evil plutocrat across the table. There are only the voters whose wealth and power is individual and distributed.

former law student reveals himself as a reactionary when he said..."Is it just dishonesty and partisanship, or is this some kind of mass hysteria that causes so many people to make completely unsupportable arguments and be so aggressively unfair about it?Indeed. Cronon's point is that Wisconsin Republicans have turned their back on their legacy:

This is the time of hope and change. Why do you want to live in the past? New problems have arisen and fls wants to hidde his head in the sand as a reactionary cad.

What adjectives do conservatives have for the Koch brothers, I wonder?

You are simply trying to use the Koch brothers as a distraction to avoid the real issues. As a liberal who is envious of "rich" people, you think they epitomize all that is evil. Remember, envy, pride (hubris) and wrath on three of the deadly sins.

Compare how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak produced wealth -- currently Apple has a larger market capitalization than Microsoft. And where did the Steves receive their education? From unionized public school teachers.

That's how my arrangement with the IRS works -- have they ever keyed your car?

I'm glad I don't live in the world of conservatives' imagination where Mary Bell drives all over he state, keying members' cars. Why do thoughts of retaliation and revenge come so naturally to conservatives?

FLS reveals the childish core of Liberalism. They envy everyone who has the slightest bit more than they do and think that Conservatives do likewise. We're not jealous, FLS, we just understand how economies work.

Compare how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak produced wealth -- currently Apple has a larger market capitalization than Microsoft. And where did the Steves receive their education? From unionized public school teachers.

Yes, those guys grew up in California, where the Democratic governor just laid off 19,000 unionized teachers. Where's your outrage about that? Don't you live in California? You should be out at the barricades, comrade.

Shouting now claim that I am a communist, that Cronon is a communist, why anyone who does not see the world as he does must be a communist-- good example of the worst kind of right wing thinking, but fortunately most folks on this blog do not fall into that bog.

The real issue is breaking the unions as per the revised bill that passed both houses of the legislature because it had no fiscal effect.

What a crock of shit. You know full well the difference between "is a fiscal bill" and "has an effect on finances."

And your line about concessions is bullshit too. The state unions have no power to make deals on behalf of the locals. Not to mention, pay and contributions are not the only issue. Have you even heard of WEA Trust?

Shouting now claim that I am a communist, that Cronon is a communist, why anyone who does not see the world as he does must be a communist-- good example of the worst kind of right wing thinking, but fortunately most folks on this blog do not fall into that bog.

FLS, why don't you just drill your own oil and refine it? Because you lack the skill, smarts and resources and you need people like the Koch's to do all the work for you. And you resent having to pay them for their work. The irony is just too much.

FLS wrote Conservatives lack a sense of proportion. They envy the "high pay" of "well-paid" schoolteachers. Yet they do not envy those who make mountains of mazuma. Why?

Where you used the word "proportion" you should have used "envy." Where you used the word "envy" you might as well strike the whole sentence, since the motives and dichotomy you posit are both false.

Conservatives understand proportion because they recognize the difference between broad-based and narrow categories.

The final bastion of every liberal argument is the outlier. Philosophically this begs the point as financially it doesn't work. For budgets, programs, and economies to work you look at broad-based costs, broad-based revenues, broad-based legal structures.

When every argument is about special categories of people (the evil rich, the virtuous union), fairness and proportion go by the wayside.

RV: Shouting now claim that I am a communist, that Cronon is a communist, why anyone who does not see the world as he does must be a communist-- good example of the worst kind of right wing thinking, but fortunately most folks on this blog do not fall into that bog.

Right. Most of us think you are a Socialist.

Socialism is about slaves and masters. And I think slavers should be shot on sight.

Fortunately, we live in a country that tolerates people like you and restrains people like me from taking you out.

This is obviously an effort to link the name of Walker to McCarthy for a national audience.

As a "history lesson" it leaves a lot to be desired. As to the notion that McCarthy's excesses resulted in a reborn Democratic party, the reality is that in Wisconsin, like the rest of the nation, there has been an ongoing realignment of the political scene with conservatives migrating to the Republican party and liberals to the Democratic party. This would have happened regardless of McCarthy. The only difference is that for a long period of time Wisconsin Democrats as an organized entity were a third party (and sometimes a fourth party) behind the Progressive Republicans, the Stalwart Republicans and the Socialists. Over time, the Progressives and Socialists migrated to the Democrats and were replaced by the Democrats.

The other part of the analysis that does not work is that LaFollette was engaging in reform against the bosses on behalf of the working population. Isn't Walker doing the same thing--reforming government for the working population against the union bosses?

In the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s public sector collective bargaining was just an experiment. Forty, fifty and sixty years later we are seeing that the experiment has become institutionalized and has created a vested special interest. Walker is the agent of change, seeking to shake up the status quo. I would argue that this is in the best tradition of Wisconsin reformers.

Not that it matters because your argument is totally irrelevant to what's going on now, as well as being anedcotal, but teachers in California didn't have collective bargaining rights when the two Steves were in school. I wonder how many serial killers graduated from California schools.

Stupid me, I used to think seniority mattered. But after three decades of just going through the motions day in and day out, along come these college-age hotshots whose biggest assets seem to be a birth certificate with 1987 on it and the capacity to do the same work I do much more efficiently and with a better attitude. I'd already been barely doing my job for years when these guys were still learning to read...

Coulter has a book on McCarthy being right after all, if you want to add that battle to the mix.

Coulter has a tendency to be right about contrarian facts.

I wasn't interested at the time and so have no opinion. Both sides were boring.

Having read it (an easy read, she writes better than she talks), the bibliography is impressive and every point in the book has a citation. She is very much aware of Lefty fact-checkers and doesn't give them any openings.

PaulV said...(i) .... (/i) but replace ( ) with < I hopeEdutcher, Is the difference between Nazi and Communist is that on is National Socialism and other is International Socialism.

There are many fine points, but my take of the basics is...

In National Socialism, the means of production are privately owned, but the government directs what is to be produced, quantities, etc. It's as much of a planned economy as any other kind of socialism.

What we think of as Communism is really state capitalism where the means of production are owned and all decisions dictated by the state. Interestingly, Italian Fascism had more in common with Soviet Russia than Germany.

PS If you're having HTML trouble, everything is enclosed in angle brackets, < and >, with the spec - i for italic, b for bold, enclosed. A forward slash, /, is used to close the expression

fls, You know, you're right about those thieving Kochs. Just this morning I was walking down the aisle of the supermarket minding my own business when a giant 12-pack of Quilted Northern bathroom tissue jumped into my cart and forced me at gunpoint to surrender 8 bucks to the cashier.

When I found out that Koch Industries makes that stuff, it all made perfect sense.

Shouting now claim that I am a communist, that Cronon is a communist, why anyone who does not see the world as he does must be a communist-- good example of the worst kind of right wing thinking, but fortunately most folks on this blog do not fall into that bog."

Sadly we see the worst kinds of left wing thinking from the trolls, including this one. There are intelligent and moderate liberals, a scared minority to be sure. Too bad none present their ideas.

I was pedaling away on the exercise bike downstairs the other night watching a PBS program on the Sphinx, which I had downloaded with a Roku box. At the beginning of the program where they acknowledge the various financial backers, they particularly noted the generous contribution of…David Koch.

Eisenhower disliked McCarthy, and was always wary of him. Eisenhower's advisors and political allies warned him to do something about McCarthy, to blunt his rising popularity and influence, but Eisenhower refused. He believed McCarthy's popularity was unsustainable, that McCarthy would ultimately overreach and overstay his welcome on the national stage. Eisenhower was of course proved right, and now McCarthy is used as the archetype for political demagogues and witch hunters.

I don't believe Walker has overreached. As Kaus points out, it's pretty surprising to see Walker and his allies push so hard on an issue that's only recently come to the forefront of politics. But I think with the seriousness of the state's and the nation's fiscal problems, Walker has a good chance of making his case.

Ah Trooper you are right; I am a fool just like my democratic socialist relatives in Scandinavia, now excuse me while I get back to making money on the stock market-- tip buy AMD on the dips and sell quickly.

I'm disappointed in your weak rebuttal. As a professor of law, I am disappointed that you're borrowing from common conservative tropes about the situation in Wisconsin.

You basically argue that voters can only voice their opinion and influence politics once every 2-4 years at the ballot box. Does this mean we're supposed to sit back and give free reign the rest of the time? Do you think that is how the lobbyist system works in the United States? How does this argument account for referendums and recalls?

I am also incredibly disappointed by your simplistic portrayals of the protesters. How often were you actually there observing? Did you know that organizations such as the TAA had voluntary clean-up crews to try and maintain cleanliness and order in the building? I personally spent four hours picking up trash and sweeping the floors. All signs were hung with painters tape, to make sure we were voicing our opinions carefully.

Yes. Why make direct observations about the characters of singular men such as McCarthy and Scott Walker when you can cast stereotypes upon everyone opposed to them!!!!!111!11!?

Reagan compromised. Sorry you didn't get the memo that's been circulating.

Are you like the slowest person on the internets? I know you see uploading posts as like masturbation to your ego, but maybe stopping and actually reading what's in the news lately might not be a bad idea every now and then. Your big mouth would benefit from even bigger eyes and ears, O Great One.

I'm curious. How many of those of you who have commented on Bill Cronon's op-ed, including Ms. Althouse, live in Wisconsin? How many of you have actually come to Madison to see four yourselves what is going on here? How many of you get your information about what is happening in Wisconsin and why from newspapers, TV news, internet news sources, blogs etc.? I'm very curious.

McCarthy was a drunk and a demagogue and a lot of the things that the left claimed him to be. He was, however, not a Communist and did not give valuable information to the Soviet Union. It was permissible to be anti-Communist but one had to finely calibrate one's opposition to such subversion. It was also permissible to have been a Communist. The calibration here was not so fine. It was, perhaps, wrong to furnish nuclear secrets to Stalin but all other forms of subversion were to be judged as a form of idealism until proven otherwise. It remains a fact that those NYC schoolteachers who were fired for membership in the Communist party later received much larger cash rewards than those Japanese who were rounded up and interned during WWII. It is worthy of note that we measure political hysteria not by the Japanese internment but by McCarthy's excesses......I'd also like to point out that the conservative senator Robert Taft opposed the internment. And look who didn't get interned. Roosevelt famously said that Italians were just a bunch of opera lovers, and I'm sure it didn't hurt that they were key demographic in several states.

Something about this reminds me of the marriage of Gertrude to Claudius in Hamlet, comparing Walker to Reagan... Really?!! Would Ronald Wilson Reagan have tolerated John Chianelli for an instant?! Uugghhh!!!

"Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of Scott Walker?" That's the most McCarthyist thing to come out of the past month, and it is labor unions and others on the left who are using it to harass businesses and other supporters of Walker. Threatening the economic destruction of people's livelihoods unless they start agreeing with you? That's McCarthyism, and it is Professor Cronon's side that is preaching it.

Apparently academics thought it sounded silly to say Walker is Hitler, so they looked for another villain to compare him to.

Because you hate Scott Walker does not make him hateful, Professor Cronon. That seems to the be the problem on your side of the debate.

History is about recounting the unfolding of events and thought in an ever-evolving world, is it not? Determining the forces behind change, and accounting for events (especially disruptive ones)

Disconcerting when a history professor rejects the notion that what once was viewed as appropriate and justifiable, even wise, may be proven flawed and outmoded in time --- and in the face of accelerating change in the world.

This professor hangs his observations on the notion that it is wrong for citizens and their elected officials to reject what was, and to adopt instead a philosophy and strategy that is right because it is necessary.

I suppose middle-grade historians become stuck in the past; that's so much easier. Top flight thinkers have an appreciation for the past and then attempt to interpret what is going on and why, with reference to the past.

Historians present the full context to the best of their academic abilities. Do the traditions of Wisconsin Democrats include going absentia when faced with tough issues? Do the traditions of Wisconsin Democrats include being held hostage by a special interest group instead of acting on what the voters have said is important to them? Do the traditions of Wisconsin Democrats justify them enacting a huge tax package under cover without hearings and debate? What about THEIR traditions? Didn't see any reference to that.

Give it to us straight up, whole cloth, professor, and then interpret as best you can. Or else spare us your opinions. We all have those, and they are worth little unless drawn from a rigorous analysis of the past leading to the needs and actions of the day.

I'm so sick and tired of reading the opinions of university professors on current union issues and the history of unions when those hypocrites don't admit to the reading public their glaring conflict of interest on the subject.

Every single professor from a public university in Wisconsin belongs to faculty associations that vehemently oppose Governor Walker's policies yet they write opinions as if they are disinterested neutral observers. If I want this kind of opinion I would ask a prostitute what is wrong about the vice squad arresting hookers. Talk about a glaring example of unethical professional behavior.

I am gratified by the number of people who've come to the defense of Joseph McCarthy. Incidentally, the title of that Ann Coulter book is "Treason." In 1995, when the VENONA transcripts were declassified, they revealed that at least 349 people in the U.S. (many of them identified by McCarthy) had engaged in clandestine activities with Soviet intelligence agencies. Among them were Solomon Adler, Cedric Belfrage, T.A. Bisson, Virginius Frank Coe, Lauchlin Currie (special assistant to FDR!), Harold Glasser, David Karr, Mary Jane Keeney, Philip Keeney, Leonard Mims, Franz Neumann, Allan Rosenberg, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and William Ludwig Ullman.

Nearly everything most people THINK they know about McCarthy is wrong: http://www.standingonthedeck.com/uploads/Whom_Do_You_Trust.pdf

I am gratified by the number of people who've come to the defense of Joseph McCarthy. Incidentally, the title of that Ann Coulter book is "Treason."

In 1995, when the VENONA transcripts were declassified, they revealed that at least 349 people in the U.S. (many of them identified by McCarthy) had engaged in clandestine activities with Soviet intelligence agencies. Among them were Solomon Adler, Cedric Belfrage, T.A. Bisson, Virginius Frank Coe, Lauchlin Currie (special assistant to FDR!), Harold Glasser, David Karr, Mary Jane Keeney, Philip Keeney, Leonard Mims, Franz Neumann, Allan Rosenberg, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and William Ludwig Ullman.

Nearly everything most people THINK they know about McCarthy is wrong: http://www.standingonthedeck.com/uploads/Whom_Do_You_Trust.pdf